Book Review: Lost Light

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Lost Light     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Michael Connelly
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Police Procedural
Series: Harry Bosch # 9
Little, Brown, April 2003, $25.95, 368 pp.

Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch takes an early retirement from the Los Angeles Police Department, but after ten months out of work, he needs something to fulfill him. He takes out his personal file on Angella Benton, a young woman found murdered in the entranceway of her apartment building. She was a production assistant for Eidolon Productions; the company was robbed of 8 million dollars thirteen days after Angella was killed.

A connection was never found but two of the marked bills surfaced, one on a terrorist heading to Mexico and the other found by FBI agent Martha Gessler who notified LAPD Detectives Cross and Dorsey. Five days after that call, Gessler turns up missing and is now presumed dead. The case goes dormant when Detective Dorsey is murdered in a robbery gone bad and his partner is totally paralyzed. The LAPD doesn’t want Harry reopening the case without telling him why and the FBI claims Homeland Security as they try to shut him down. Harry, being Harry, goes his own way and almost loses his life in a shoot-out where he is vastly outnumbered.

This Harry Bosch novel is very different than the other twelve books in the series. It is told in the first person so readers know what the hero is thinking and feeling at all times. He is no longer a policeman with a badge that will make people talk to him so he has to act like a private investigator and get what he needs to solve the case by other methods. The ending is a shocker but it is not the end of the series, just the end of that phase of the hero’s life.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner